Repair Damage To The Preserve

January 3, 1996

It now appears that The Preserve, against long odds, just may be preserved after all, and that is a welcome holiday gift for Boca Raton and South Florida.

The developers of the 46-acre site at Yamato Road and Military Trail admitted two days after Christmas that they had, indeed, harmed environmentally sensitive land on the tract on which they plan to build 104 luxury residences.

Toll Brothers promised to repair the damage to a 6.7-acre city preserve of slash pines and saw palmetto caused by the construction firm's clear-cutting of 18,000 square feet of land and the pumping of water onto another 29,250 square feet.

Boca Raton officials should insist that the developers not only restore the land to its original state, but also make a substantial contribution to the city's environmentally sensitive lands trust fund.

Earlier this month, alert city authorities cited Toll Brothers for four violations of environmental laws. The firm originally contended it had not removed all the trees in the affected area, but only ran over it with trucks. That defense didn't stand up under scrutiny.

The law mandates a `'triple penalty" for violations, meaning developers theoretically should be required to repair or improve three times the amount of land they have damaged. But in practice, there generally isn't sufficient property available to enforce the penalty. Officials should revisit the ordinance and improve it with provisions to ensure that the public will be adequately compensated for developers' environmental transgressions.

Another remedy that deserves study is a proposal to force contractors to surrender some of the land on which they had planned to build homes in order to satisfy public claims for proven damage.

The Preserve experience should be turned into a definitive message to developers that they no longer will be permitted to bulldoze the Florida landscape with impunity in the name of maximizing profits.